Strange developments concerning an old, familiar name

From reading this article in the AmeriQuests journal, linked to today on Political Theory Daily Review, you'd think Gerald Early has more than a few hang-ups. Not to say this isn't an informative and...interesting... piece, although it is in need of an editor at a few points. The typeface and huge blocks of text also make it a chore to read, but I recommend it, for reasons which will soon become clear. Early leads with a Dewey quotation and later brings in Walter Lippmann, so Robot, I know you'll tune in.

The first two-thirds of the article comprise a rather staid account of black/white American relations and the rise of the black intellectual. When you come to the final paragraphs, however, Early slips into a palpable pessimism, especially when discussing black faculty recruitment in academe. I quote at (extreme) length this long-winded analysis:

Universities have become the largest employer of these intellectual; most schools that consider themselves major or important want to have at least one or two, mostly in order to have some sort of race-based aspect to the curriculum (for the social and psychological good of the students), to demonstrate among things in this multicultural age the pedestrian fact that blacks have brains, too, (no one wants anything that involves the conspicuous use of brain-power to be all-white), and to be “role models” for the black students these schools try to enroll; ironically, this means that for these schools black intellectuals exist, largely, perhaps exclusively, for not only extra-intellectual reasons but almost for anti-intellectual reasons, for the black intellectual’s importance is connected almost solely with his or her race, their significance as a sociological phenomenon, and the significance of the race-based stuff they teach largely for its sociological resonance: what it means for the school to offer this, what it means for the students to take these courses with these professors, somehow everyone being liberated by it all in some mysterious way where through the very act of supposedly challenging the institution through one’s presence, the black intellectual merely confirms its legitimacy in the desperation that he or she exhibits in wanting the institution to confirm his or her own.

Yes, that was all one sentence. He goes on to say that for black intellectuals this position "can only make most people unhappy as they exist in the half-light of being both an endangered species and prima donnas, a kind of privileged twilight that is meant to mask or to dim their continued marginal status in American intellectual circles on the whole."

Then we really start our descent: "The most famous of this cohort of black university intellectuals are Henry Louis Gates, the director of the African American Studies Department at Harvard and Cornel West, also of Harvard University. Despite their enormous fame, status, considerable earning power, and great learning, their work is of very little consequence in American letters for very much the reasons I have outlined." Now, this is just silly, bordering on the envious. Despite the obligatory insertion of "great learning," the phrase "enormous fame, status, considerable earning power" smacks of a low blow. And how exactly is Henry Louis Gates' work "of very little consequence"? Gates is a MacArthur genius fellow; his book The Signifying Monkey won the American Book Award; he edited the Norton Anthology of African American Literaure; he and Kwame Anthony Appiah edited the Encarta Africana, an online African-American encyclopedia; he has written articles for Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, which is more than most academics and intellectuals can say. (Gates' Harvard web page.) To simply assert that his work is of little consequence is totally irresponsible. He also gets Cornel West's title wrong: West teaches at Princeton, not Harvard.

Then Early states: "As someone who is considered by many a black public intellectual, I claim no special exception for myself from the general condition as I see it of the black intellectual in the American university and in American life. I directed a Black Studies Program for about seven or eight years and thought it odd, fruitless way [sic] for an institution to dispense charity, and a feeble attempt at minority 'enabling.'" This statement would probably confuse his colleages in the Washington University African and African-American Studies Department, whose website lists him as an affiliated professor. "I directed" and "thought it a fruitless way" give the false impression that Early has renounced any ties to African-American Studies departments. Early has also built his career on the sort of African-American- and race-centric scholarship he laments in this article. Work sample: Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation, This is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s, Miles Davis and American Culture, The Muhammed Ali Reader, The Sammy Davis, Jr., Reader, and One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture. According to his faculty page, he's currently working on a book about all-black Fisk University.

The next and final paragraph is either a glib, hasty summary or a smug, self-pitying write-off. Brace yourself for more long sentences:

I was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, so I have an “impressive” set of credentials to make me seem more important, by virtue of my education, than I am. I teach in a field, American literature, that seems to be transforming itself into something else: sociology for some, “theory” for others (who rather think themselves quite intellectual because they toss about a bunch of densely-worded thought-clichés), “culture” for still others (like myself who have decided that no canvas is too big to doodle and finger-paint upon); films for others (where, after all, everything from music scores to magazines ads are “texts” to be read and interpret).

The first sentence is an insult to Penn and Cornell, plain and simple, done to make Early seem honest and self-critical. The repeated use of quotation marks ("theory," "culture," "texts") is truly annoying, as is Early's pronouncement about "densely-worded thought-clichés." It's annoying when people who know nothing about literary theory succumb to this kind of anti-intellectualism, even worse when chaired academics who have numerous colleagues in the field do it.

So ultimately, I'm confused. What exactly is AmeriQuests? Did someone really peer-review this article? Did someone even edit it? Most of the other articles in this issue, a special on "Public Intellectuals, Academia, and the Media," use extensive annotation. Early's clearly does not. Does he suppose that no one will read this article, in which he offhandedly belittles other academics, even whole departments and universities? By all means, if Early thinks that African American Studies are problematic, he has the right to speak his mind. But this article is reckless in its characterizations and dishonest in its self-presentation. Weird.